Power struggle leaves 31,000 in the dark

By Kirsty Needham, Consumer WriterNovember 22 2002

Electricity companies are cutting off the power to 31,000 households a year in NSW, and the energy ombudsman says the situation is staggering.

The latest annual report from the Energy and Water Ombudsman reveals forced disconnections, which the ombudsman said should only be used as a last resort, have increased sharply from the 24,000 recorded in its first report in 1999.

The ombudsman, Clare Petre, said the number of disconnections - usually because customers could not pay their bills - was much higher than in Victoria, or, indeed, the whole of Britain, which reported just 400 a year.

The report, which found complaints against utilities rose 15 per cent in 2001/02, outlined the case of a man who had been forced to live without electricity for a year. "There are people who are living with kerosene and candles and I find it disturbing that in the 20th century this is occurring," Ms Petre said.

She urged power companies to consider introducing pay-as-you-go meters, which have been trialled in Tasmania. These gave families an idea of how much electricity appliances were using and helped them to budget.");document.write("

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"I think it would go a long way to helping customers stay connected. As long as it was not forced on people, but was a choice," she said.

While electricity companies were offering flexible payment options, it appeared emergency vouchers, issued through community service agencies, were not reaching rural customers hit by drought, she said.

Two-thirds - or 4971 - of complaints against electricity, water and gas companies in the year were about billing, followed by customer service (14 per cent) and supply (10 per cent).

Electricity companies attracted 83 per cent of the complaints, and a third of these were about disconnection or payment difficulties.

Integral Energy, servicing Sydney's western suburbs and the South Coast, attracted the most complaints per 10,000 customers. A spokesman for the company said Integral had taken a stand on customer debt in the year and this had caused a rise in disconnections.

"We have been acting on customers who refuse to pay, rather than can't pay. Disconnection is a last resort after repeated reminders," he said.

The ombudsman's report described many cases where electricity and gas companies had estimated accounts because it was inconvenient to take meter readings, and then issued a "catch-up" bill of thousands of dollars when a reading was finally taken. Consumers who were unable to pay complained that, had they known their actual consumption, they would have acted to curb it.

One woman was told she had not been warned of a $2283 annual bill because of a company policy not to issue quarterly bills that were unusually high.

A man who rented a unit found he was being charged for the entire block's electricity.

Full competition for energy retailers was introduced last January, but Ms Petre said city dwellers seemed to be the only people to have benefitted from offers to switch.

"Most complaints from rural NSW were from people who tried to exercise choice, but found no one wants to give them an offer."